Mahanu

live project

My First Video Game

ten years old, one finished game

A ten-year-old builds and finishes their first real video game — designed, vibe-coded with an AI helper, playtested and shipped — learning that an idea in your head can become something other people actually play.

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A copy carries over only the public parts you see here — the owners' private files never leave their own vaults.

Four AIs, one kid's game

A nine-year-old designed a game: a circular maze you fly through like Flappy Bird, steering with three actions. Then we ran an experiment — we handed the same short brief and the kid's design to four free AI assistants and asked each one to turn it into a game a child could actually play. No hand-holding, no cleanup afterward. What you play below is exactly what each model produced.

The one-paragraph brief every model got:

that's a game my 9 year old designed and wants to build, it is a circular maze and playing is similar to flappy bird with 3 actions supported written at bottom, can you make this a real game they can play

The notes on the cards below are the designer's own words. Play them and see if you agree — each opens full-screen and runs in a locked sandbox, so it's safe to just click in and try.

The original design, drawn by hand

The full one-page game design is here: Game design — one page.

Play the builds

Same brief, four free AIs, default chat page, zero cleanup. Gemini's is my favorite — try to beat it!

Each build was made by an AI and runs sandboxed — it can't touch your accounts or anything else on Mahanu.

Published work